Forestry Products

Equipment for your wood business

To get started in woodworking you are going to need some basic tools and some space, you don't have to have all the major power tools and you don't even really need a large space. When you're starting out you can start with small hand tools and a few portable power tools.

A good solid workbench is a must and it's helpful to have a vice, preferably a wooden one to prevent wood on wood being damaged. If you intend cutting a lot of wood particularly outdoors then an old door on a couple of saw horses will be fine.

At the beginning of a project you are going to need some tools for marking and measuring such as a combination square, a tape measure and a carpenters pencil, use the square to layout your project accurately then mark it using the pencil, you'll notice the pencil is elliptical this prevents it from rolling and has the advantage of a very thin line for accuracy or a very thick line for a very rough course surface.

Once you've marked the wood you're going to cut it this can be either by a hand saw or an electric saw. There are many types of hand saw but for the beginner l recommend a cross cut saw ( these are used for cutting across the grain ) but this will depend on what type of wood you intend to cut. A circular saw saves a lot of effort and will do a very good job of cutting a straight line, to make it more accurate you can clamp a fence to your work which will help to keep it moving in a straight line.
Remember one of the most dangerous tools you can use is the saw, especially the electric circular saw or a table saw these are spinning blades! so treat them with respect.

To cut curves the best tool to use is a jigsaw they have interchangeable blades for cutting different types of wood and various thicknesses. After you've cut your wood to size you're going to want to shape the wood and the simplest tool for doing this is the block plane, this can make shamfers, little angle cuts to soften edges, it can also round over edges and plane flat surfaces, a very handy tool.

Another extremely handy power tool is the router, the router can take a variety of bits in it's chuck, there are straight bits for making straight cuts used to make joints and others for making mouldings. After you're finished shaping the wood you may want to drill holes in it and the simplest way is to use a cordless drill, the cordless drill can also take a variety of drill bits in it's chuck.

Before long you're going to need to smooth the wood and this can be done by hand with sandpaper wrapped around a sanding block or with an orbital electric sander, however be careful as the electric sander can take off wood very quickly.

Next you're going to want to glue your project together and you will need some good strong sturdy clamps to hold it in place whilst the glue dries. Another thing you're going to need is a little bit of wall space for tool storage.

Finally and most importantly you need some simple safety gear, glasses must always be worn when using power tools and the chips are flying and when it's noisy you should always put on ear protection also when a lot of fine dust is in the air ( very harmful to the lungs ) you'll need a decent dust mask.

Posted by Admin